Chapter 239: Frog Hospital (30) — Becoming a Ghost

【Soul Contract has been signed. This Contract is guaranteed by the rules of the world; no entity may defy it.】

At Blue Frog Hospital, Qi Si stood in the dense, light-scarce fog, his murky shadow making him resemble a forest wraith.

Or rather, he was already meant to be a Ghost.

The system interface grew darker and darker, turning the charred black of burnt paper, with an eerie red glow at the edges, creeping inwards like blood vessels.

Blood-red text refreshed in swathes across the black background, the same information repeating millions of times, almost filling his entire vision.

【Name: Soul Contract】

【Note: Can only be used three times per instance. Exceeding the limit will cause the player to mutate into a Ghost.】

【Times used: 4/3】

Although the hospital world had a refresh mechanism, it did not reset the number of Contracts signed with other players.

Qi Si first signed a Contract with Huang Xiaofei, then Lu Zimo, then Cheng Xiaoyu… signing the Soul Contract with Lin Chen was his fourth time in this instance.

He was gambling with his life.

No, this was no longer a gamble; it was a reckless indulgence, a gambler’s madness, knowing full well that things would turn for the worse but still pressing on.

Only because at a certain point, the benefits of taking risks were immensely high, and retreating would render all efforts futile.

Only because a wave-like inertia pushed him to a multiple-choice question, and he clearly knew which option was most effective.

Only because for him, the cost was not unacceptable; instead, it could lead to new avenues… The counter on the system interface flashed wildly like a malfunctioning appliance after exceeding its limit, sharp burrs symbolizing poor signal grew at the ends of the strokes, constantly changing in length.

A blood-red filter spread before his eyes, coating everything in his vision with a watery red exposure, dazzling like the sleeplessness brought on by staring directly at the sun.

Miscellaneous noises reverberated at the back of his mind, initially vague and soft like sleep talk, then becoming clearly audible with each repetition.

“You’re not human…” a sinister voice, trembling.

“You can’t be human anymore!” a sharp, high-pitched voice, gloating.

“You’re a Ghost… a monster!” a fearful voice, pronouncing judgment.

Qi Si felt his thoughts being dispersed and reassembled, something being extracted in the process, and something new being kneaded in.

Tiny fragments of madness, irrationality, bloodlust, cruelty, indifference, and the non-human realm were mixed into his originally integrated personality, splintering his behavioral logic into pieces.

His body temperature continuously dropped, and mist formed by water droplets floated around him, turning into tiny, pale blue ice crystals slowly descending, like a light snow mixed with rain.

His spirit and flesh felt as if they had been disassembled from head to toe, each molecule washed clean in clear water, then uniformly re-colored with the remaining dirty water.

Throughout the entire process, Qi Si felt not an iota of pain or discomfort; touch, pain, smell, and sight all melted into a porridge, softly immersing and enveloping him.

After an unknown period, everything ended, and the blood-red barrier obscuring his vision and thoughts collapsed. The system interface stopped refreshing text, and the residual warnings faded to normal silver-white, only the background remained as deep as night.

Aside from the Eerie Game panel, the colors of the world before him had dimmed considerably; white turned to light gray, bloodstains to pale pink, like a canvas with manually reduced transparency, a layer of grayish-white fog painted over the surface of vibrant scenes.

“Is this the world through the eyes of a Ghost?” Qi Si touched his face, his equally cold fingers feeling no change in temperature.

Becoming a Ghost seemed to have no significant negative effects other than a lower body temperature and slightly reduced color perception.

He suddenly felt as if he had returned to the later stages of the Shuangxi Town instance, once again possessing the power of a Ghost.

He just didn’t know if, in his current state, he could leave the instance normally after clearing it—this was the true gamble he was making.

However, combining it with Zhang Yiyu’s experience, leaving the instance shouldn’t be a problem; what he needed to worry about was the pursuit and containment by the Eerie Investigation Bureau.

Of course, with the arrangements Qi Si had made in reality, the Eerie Investigation Bureau really couldn’t do anything to him.

Risking the sacrifice of a large number of innocent people to contain a seemingly low-threat Ghost is not a cost-effective deal, is it?

No need to overthink for now, Qi Si put the crumpled Book of the Dead back into his inventory, turning off its effect of disguising him as a spirit—it was best to use such items with negative side effects sparingly.

Well, now that he was a genuine Ghost, there was no need to use items for disguise anymore, which was simple and convenient.

Qi Si suddenly felt like laughing, for no discernible reason.

The fear of the unknown that should have surfaced seemed to have been replaced by various strange emotions, as if he had returned to many years ago when he couldn’t understand the mechanism of emotions.

But that wasn’t important.

Emotions, personality, dreams, ideals—these things beyond survival could all be discarded in the face of absolute profit, and labeling them as noble was merely to sell them at a higher price.

Qi Si raised his left hand and checked the time; it was five-thirty in the morning.

He leisurely walked towards the ward area along the route he remembered… At six in the morning, in Ward 404, Sun Dekuan and Lu Zimo were woken up promptly by the wake-up bell.

After establishing their cooperation strategy, the two summarized their respective items.

Lu Zimo’s item reserves were

Apart from a flashlight and a paper chain, he only had a rusty bronze compass.

【Name: Ghost-Guiding Compass】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: The pointer will always point to the most dangerous Ghost in the current space.】

【Note: Essential for tomb raiding and home use.】

Although Sun Dekuan hadn’t cleared many instances, his item situation was much better than his.

He wasn’t short of small tools like Swiss Army knives and matches, and he also had two special items.

【Name: Bloodstained Cleaver】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: Transforms any ingredient into edible meat.】

【Note: Its previous owner was a meat lover. To frequently eat pollution-free and harmless meat, he crafted this cleaver through mystical means.】

…【Name: Left Hand of an Unknown Creature】

【Type: Item】

【Effect: After fusing with the player’s flesh, some unknown changes may occur.】

【Note: (data deleted)】

Last night, after comparing his and Lu Zimo’s items, Sun Dekuan felt a little relieved, but only a little.

On paper, Lu Zimo indeed couldn’t beat him, but who knew if the other party was lying?

Skepticism was contagious; Sun Dekuan felt that after spending these few days with Qi Si and Lu Zimo, those two schemers, he was almost developing persecution paranoia.

The white light of dawn streamed through the window lattice, illuminating the pristine white ward.

Lu Zimo’s Ghost-Guiding Compass was openly placed on the low table, while Sun Dekuan’s two items were stored in his inventory.

The corridor outside the door awakened in a few seconds, footsteps and the rolling sound of meal carts breaking the silence.

“Cherish food, eliminate waste, breakfast must be finished!”

“Eat a good breakfast, respond to policies, and listen to the broadcast promptly!”

The same shouts as the previous days arrived as scheduled, and knocking sounds echoed sequentially from distant doorways, becoming clearer and more distinct.

“Thump, thump, thump!”

Urgent knocking sounded on the door.

Lu Zimo climbed out of bed, walked quickly, pushed open the door, and took two bowls of Tadpole Soup from the nurse’s hands.

At first, the nurse brought four bowls of Tadpole Soup; after Huang Xiaofei’s death, she only brought three bowls.

By analogy, there were indeed only two living players left in Blue Frog Hospital.

Lu Zimo handed one bowl of soup to Sun Dekuan, then took the other bowl to the windowsill and poured it all out.

As expected, he didn’t hear a prompt about the failure rate increasing.

He subtly curled his lips, his ears keenly catching familiar footsteps.

He knew that the replicated “Huang Xiaofei” from the instance had arrived.

A tall, thin black-clad ghost figure walked straight into the ward from outside the door, the beautiful woman’s eyes hollow, lying on the bed as if a programmed machine, staring wide-eyed at the white ceiling.

The compass pointer on the low table suddenly spun rapidly, taking half a minute to slowly stop, pointing at the “Huang Xiaofei” on the bed.

It seemed that this “Huang Xiaofei” was indeed a Ghost.

Not long after, another set of footsteps sounded.

The young man in a white shirt and black trousers walked straight towards them with the exact same pace as “Huang Xiaofei”.

His pale face, scarlet eyes, and the mist condensed around him due to the cold, all combined to make him look even more like a Ghost than “Huang Xiaofei”.

“Cheng An.”

Lu Zimo calmly uttered the uninvited guest’s name.

He hadn’t cornered Qi Si in the operating room last night, and then heard the news of “Cheng An’s disappearance” from the nurse, so he had already concluded that the young man named “Cheng An” had died in the Directors Office.

It was also within his expectations that the other party would return to the ward in replicated form under the instance’s refresh mechanism.

Even so, Lu Zimo still had some doubts.

He looked at Sun Dekuan, about to tell the latter to pull out his cleaver and chop off the young man’s neck again, but saw the fat man, who was always more trouble than he was worth, staring intently at the compass, his eyes filled with surprise.

“Little Lu, you… what’s going on with that compass spinning like that?”

Lu Zimo shifted his gaze, only to see the Ghost-Guiding Compass’s pointer spinning rapidly once again, this time much faster than before, turning into a palm-colored blur.

“There’s nothing else to it; it just means the one who came in is also a Ghost,” Lu Zimo said indifferently. “The good thing about my item is that it can make real-time judgments, so there’s no fear of anyone slipping through the net.”

“Oh my, that sounds good!”

As the two spoke, the blur settled, and the rusted pointer pointed at the newly arrived young man, remaining still.

The item couldn’t be wrong; it seemed “Cheng An” had truly died and become a Ghost, and for some reason, he was even more dangerous than Huang Xiaofei.

It was best not to provoke such an existence.

Lu Zimo abandoned his plan to have Sun Dekuan try a chop, quietly and obediently stood aside, offering the young man a respectful gaze.

The young man seemed completely oblivious to the collusion of the two humans, walking expressionlessly towards the window-side bed, brushing past Lu Zimo.

For a moment, Lu Zimo felt an illusory cold wind, scraping past his ear like a knife.

No, that wasn’t an illusion!

Lu Zimo saw a scarlet Cursed Pendulum shoot out from the young man’s sleeve, dragging a dark chain as it flew towards him.

He instinctively raised his hand to block, but the sharp pendulum pierced through his palm, bringing a cold and tingling pain.

He caught a glimpse of the distant “Huang Xiaofei” reaching out to him, seemingly wanting to block the attack for him as she had countless times before.

However, it was too late.

Most Ghosts without consciousness were dull, let alone those without any special abilities.

The Cursed Pendulum plunged straight into Lu Zimo’s chest, carrying a long streak of blood across the void, and hit the grayish-white plaster wall behind him with a soft thud.

Lu Zimo’s corpse fell backward, landing against the blood-soaked corner of the wall.

He died without understanding why Qi Si, who had become a Ghost, would suddenly attack him.

Sun Dekuan only realized what had happened the moment Lu Zimo fell, he scrambled out of bed, brandishing his cleaver and charging at Qi Si.

His collusion with Lu Zimo was obvious, Qi Si wouldn’t let him off… he had to fight for a chance to live!

However, upon seeing the young man’s calm expression and clearly non-human aura, he ultimately didn’t dare to bring the knife down, instead his legs gave out and he slumped to the ground.

“Brother Cheng… I’m sorry! My mind just wasn’t working for a moment, and that kid tricked me! Please… please be magnanimous and don’t hold it against me!”

The scenes of interacting with Qi Si over the past few days were vivid in his mind; Sun Dekuan didn’t believe he could defeat him in a one-on-one fight, and might even enrage this madman, leading to a cruel death by torture.

If Lu Zimo were still alive, if they hadn’t lowered their guard, they could have teamed up to subdue him; but there was no if, Lu Zimo was instantly killed with one blow, what was he supposed to do?

The situation changed in an instant, he had lost his only chance, it was better to say some good words, at least he could die quickly, maybe even survive… Qi Si had long anticipated Sun Dekuan’s psychology, he silently stepped back a few paces and sighed: “You get up first, be quiet, or I’ll chop you into pieces and stuff you into a bucket.”

Sun Dekuan understood Qi Si’s unspoken meaning that he didn’t want to kill him immediately, and he scrambled into the corner, afraid of being an eyesore.

Qi Si leisurely walked out the door, bent down to pick up a bowl of Tadpole Soup placed at the entrance, returned to the window, and poured out all the soup inside.

Half an hour ago, he had arrived early in the corridor, intercepted the nurse preparing meals at the intersection, and took one bowl of soup that was to be delivered to Ward 404.

The “Cheng An” he was impersonating had good connections, and it was perfectly reasonable for him to take his breakfast in advance, so the nurse agreed without saying anything.

It was precisely because of this that Lu Zimo and Sun Dekuan only received two bowls of Tadpole Soup, and due to the habitual thinking developed yesterday, they believed that there were only two living players left in this area.

Qi Si put down the empty bowl and walked to the corner where the Blue Frog was squatting.

After the refresh at exactly six in the morning, the backpack containing his Blue Frog was, as expected, empty, so he had to return to the ward to retrieve this useful Blue Frog.

The frog, with its red eyes and white belly, glared fiercely at the black-haired young man.

Qi Si deftly wrapped it in a towel and stuffed it into his backpack.

Having done everything, he finally stopped suppressing himself and coughed lightly.

When Sun Dekuan rushed at him earlier, sweat droplets had splashed into his trachea, instantly bringing a burning pain that still felt hot and uncomfortable.

He thus realized another negative effect of becoming a Ghost:

Any touch from a living person would injure him, and any bodily fluid from a living person was poison to him.